Samuel Jang - Church Visit #2

Church name: Holy Angels Roman Catholic Church

Church address: 180 South Russell Ave, Aurora, IL 60506

Date attended: March 20th, 2016

Church category: Tridentine Mass

Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context?

    The sanctuary was beautifully embellished with stained-glass and icons. I felt very small inside the sanctuary because the ceiling was so high up. What I noticed about the church immediately, however, was that the statutes/figures as well as the cross, were covered by a black cloth. I wasn't sure if this was due to tradition, or if it was because it was palm sunday. During the service, it felt a little bit "understaffed", in the sense that one priest was doing everything (other than people helping with the offering). The priest had his back turned towards us the entire time, showing a golden cross with purple background on his back. There were little "kneeling stands" for us in the pews and the congregation would stand up or kneel while listening to the priest speak in Latin. What was very interesting about this service was that some of the women (and their children) were wearing head-coverings, something I had never seen in my church. As compared to my regular church context, it was very different. The priest only spoke for 10 minutes maximum in English, while the rest of the service was in Latin. I'm used to a 40 minute sermon, with worship, and prayer. The priest and congregation did pray, but from what I could understand, a lot of it was prayers to Mary, which I am not used to. The entire service also only lasted around 50 minutes, which is much shorter than I'm used to.

How did the worship service illuminate for you the history and contours of global Christianity?

    I was a bit intimidated by the service because I thought to myself, "Dang, these must be an elite group of people if they understand Latin", but it widened my worldview that people go to this kind of mass. By being in a service where tradition and its original language are held in reverence, it reinforced the importance of tradition in the church. In wider Protestantism, we have the tendency to throw away tradition, and try to do something new. The mass is reassuring because it holds the idea that people know where they're faith is coming from. Our faith is formed a lot by the "faith of the fathers". Just like my experience in the Eastern Orthodox church, it made me feel a bit envious that those in the congregation have such a better grasp of tradition than I. 

How did the worship service illuminate for you your personal identity as a Christian?

    Like I hinted at before, I was very impressed by the congregation as a whole, which makes me hold the mass in reverence. The people inside were very respectful, quiet, and listened to the priest wholeheartedly. Even when the service ended, the congregation waited for the priest to leave the sanctuary first, and then did the congregation follow. We don't really do that for pastors! (Maybe we idolize them in a different way). The mass didn't make me want to point fingers and say, "Hey, you're doing this wrong because it's different from how I do things", but it made me say, "Wow! Cool! People do things this way!". I do not want to have a narrow view of these things just because I was raised in a Protestant church. This church experience was humbling and diversifying.